Khan: I’ll be ready for the Peterson rematch in April or May

By William Mackay: Former IBF/WBA light welterweight champion Amir Khan (26-2, 18 KO’s) is pretty confident that he’ll get the rematch that he’s been talking about from Lamont Peterson (30-1-1, 15 KO’s) in 2012, and says he’ll be ready to face him in April or May.

That’s when Khan is praying that Peterson will fight him but it’s not likely to happen if Peterson gets the fight with WBO welterweight champion Manny Pacquiao that he’s hoping to get. Khan may have to wait a little while to get the rematch, although he will almost definitely be facing Peterson sometime in 2012. But Khan is in a big hurray with his career and is already deeply upset that the loss has thrown off his plans for the future by three months.
Khan said “The fight has put me back three months because I want to get the win against Lamont Peterson and that will put me back where I want to be.”

Khan makes it sound like he’s late for picking up his groceries or something. I think he needs to see things with a better vision because even if he beats Peterson, the damage has been done with how bad Khan looked in the first fight. He was exposed as having no inside game and panicking under pressure to the point where he was running around continuously in the second half of the fight and fouling like mad.

Khan still doesn’t see what he was doing by pushing off on Peterson as fouling, saying “Pushing is allowed in boxing. In the rulebook it says that you can’t take points away from pushing.”

It depends on what rulebook Khan is talking about. The rulebook I’ve seen states that pushing isn’t allowed. I know referees choose to ignore it, as they do with fighters that hold a lot, but it is and should be considered a foul. But if it isn’t a considered a foul where points can be deducted then it really should be.

If you’ve got a fighter like Khan who is just shoving an opponent away all night long when they try to get in close, it doesn’t even look like boxing anymore. It’s like some kind of elementary school fight instead of a real fight. When I was a kid, I saw a tall 5’8” girl beat up the strongest kid in my 6th grade glass by shoving him really hard each time he would get close to try and hit. Finally she shoved him into a wall and he went down. But it was almost comical, because this guy would have leveled her if he could have landed anything but she had a foot in reach over him and shoved him like 8 or 9 times in the fight and never got close to her.

Shoving someone gives you a big advantage in fights, especially with a taller fighter like Khan. He was shoving like crazy in the second half of the fight and he did at least shoves all total in the process of losing two points. And besides the shoving, Khan was grabbing and pulling down on Peterson’s head all night long whenever he got close. That certainly wasn’t legal, and Khan got away with it all night long without losing one point. Peterson complained about it, saying it hurt his back and neck, and he felt it was completely wrong that Khan was allowed to do this.

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